I got my first digital camera in 2003, after fifteen years of using old fashioned film photography. The idea that a photograph could be checked and if necessary deleted and retaken without having to send the film off to be processed and printed was fantastic, and the quality was decent too… after all my first digi, the Kodak CX4200, sported a massive 2 megapixels!

The first photographs I took were actually during my very first paranormal investigation during that same year in the rather impressive Chillingham Castle. After the investigation though, when I was reviewing the images, I noticed something strange: small blobs of light on some of the photographs. It wasn’t something I’d seen before on film photography, apart from when the flash from the camera hit falling rain, but in the case of the investigation these odd little blobs were on images taken indoors and in dry weather.

So, I contacted the investigation group that I’d been a guest of and to my surprise they explained what I’d caught was images of a paranormal phenomenon known as orbs or manifestation of spirits. Naturally, capturing such wonderful ‘evidence’ on my first foray into official investigation was something to be celebrated. That year I began my research and investigations which ultimately led to my book, Otherworld North East: Ghosts and Hauntings Explored being published by Tyne Bridge Publishing (Newcastle City Libraries) in October of 2004… and in the book, photographic ‘proof’ of the paranormal in the form of orbs.

As time progressed, the group I’d pulled together to undertake the field investigations for the book continued to operate as Otherworld North East, and I began to get more suspicious of ‘orbs’ with their habit of mostly appearing in dusty or damp conditions or more spectacularly in clouds of insects. It was at that point that research seemed to point at very clear culprits for the actual origin of orbs.

In 1989, model FUJIX DS-X, the first full digital camera was commercially released, but the technology didn’t become popular until the mid 1990s. During the technology’s early development, most photographers reported that the cameras’ circle of confusion was high compared to the film counterparts.

The circle of confusion (CoC) can be described as “…a point of light directed onto a camera’s focal plane by the lens” (https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-basic-guide-to-circle-of-confusion-in-photography). These points of light comprise the image that you see: when the circle of confusion is narrow, the point is sharp: when the CoC widens, that point blurs. The narrowness and sharpness of these points depends on a number of elements, but primarily on a camera’s focal length and f-stop, neither of which were particularly advanced in the early digital models. This can be seen in bokeh photography, when one item is sharply in focus when the background is blurred: the image below shows the newspaper with a narrow CoC resulting in sharp focus, while the background has a wide CoC resulting in blurring: in the case of wide CoC on light sources, such as reflections, this can result in discs of variable sizes and opacity appearing in the image taken.

So how does this help explain orbs? Simply put, ‘orbs’ appear when the flash fires on the camera. What you get is the part of the image you focused on receiving a narrow CoC, with other points outside of the focal point in the photograph, such as reflections of dust particles, moisture or other airborne elements receiving a wide CoC, and thus blurring. So, your photograph gets blurred orbs of light appearing…

Tests by Fuji and Sony also show that a lot of ‘orbs’ can also be caused by the very simple process of glare, when an airborne article is close to the flash of a camera and the lense at the same time, with the ‘bounce’ off the particle causing refraction in the lense. This process is called backscatter or near-camera reflection: the process has even been officially documented in crime scene investigation as a camera artefact.

Fuji’s statement was actually published as early as July 2005: “There is always a certain amount of dust floating around in the air. You may have noticed this at the movies when you look up at the light coming from the movie projector and notice the bright sparks floating around in the beam. In the same way, there are always dust particles floating around nearby when you take pictures with your camera. When you use the flash, the light from the flash reflects off the dust particles and is sometimes captured in your shot. Of course, dust particles very close to the camera are blurred since they are not in focus, but because they reflect the light more strongly than the more distant main subject of the shot, that reflected light can sometimes be captured by the camera and recorded on the resulting image as round white spots. So these dots are the blurred images of dust particles.”

So as can be seen, even in the early days of digital photography it was a published fact that ‘orbs’ were the results of camera artefacts and the results of airborne particles and camera focal lengths. So where did the idea that orbs were paranormal come from? Any guesses?

Before the turn of the century, there were few references to orbs being paranormal. So far, I’ve found a reference to the idea being debunked in 1994 by Joe Nickell in his book Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. However, in 2002 a new series aired on UK TV called Most Haunted. The show proved so popular that it became the template for almost all ghost hunting groups that sprang up at the time, and one of the theories that the show presented was that orbs were paranormal in nature. One such group was the one I did that first investigation with at Chillingham Castle.

So, moving ahead

Its been twenty years since that first investigation at Chillingham Castle, and the suggestion or belief that orbs are spirits and paranormal in nature, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, remains strong.

So why is this? A lot comes down to understanding, or rather the lack of understanding, of how photography works. A lot of paranormal groups and paranormal entertainment companies still insist that orbs are evidence of ghosts. The cynic in me says this is simply because for the entertainment contingent, they need to have something to show their paying customers. The same goes for the paranormal groups who need that shred of ‘evidence’ to keep interest high. There are even those out there that are so invested in the ‘paranormal-orb’ phenomenon that they make a living from interpreting their spiritual meaning. Then there are those who simply see an orb as evidence that a deceased loved one still comes to visit.

Paranormal TV shows are in some cases moving away from the idea, but with the internet being so accessible why haven’t most folk just looked it up and educated themselves? A lot don’t want to: if the TV or their local ghost hunting ‘experts’ say orbs are evidence of the afterlife, then so be it. If however you look it up, things don’t improve much.

Tonight I did a Google search for ‘paranormal orbs’. The first four entries describe the orb as paranormal. The fifth entry is a PC game also describing orbs as paranormal. The next four are paranormal orbs, with the final entry on the first search page finally being a description of backscatter by Wikipedia. The Sony article (linked below) then features at the top of the second page, with the next nine articles saying paranormal. Even Shutterstock and iStock have a massive collection of ‘spirit orbs’. Serious articles such as those by the Skeptical Inquirer don’t appear til page 4. By this time almost anyone with an interest in orbs will have stopped the search… they won’t continue through to page 6 where ASSAP’s case study finally appears.

So at the moment, even those who want to look beyond the paranormal explanation will likely give up on an internet search before they find anything that describes the actual cause of orbs…

Bottom line is that it has been known for decades that ‘orbs’ are a photographic artefact with specific physical causes. There are those paranormal groups and individuals who’ll tell you those little balls of light are ghosts or spirits come for a visit. What you believe is up to you: for those who want to believe in ghost orbs, no evidence presented will persuade you otherwise. But me? Well, I think you can probably answer that question from this blog…